Painting and Philosophy: An Aesthetic Study of Paintings 3800-MF26-S-OG

During the seminar, we will be discussing -with reference to examples- various ways of
understanding representation in European painting and the premises for the deconstruction of this
category in modern artistic practice and contemporary philosophy. Reflection on the ways of
evaluating images will include issues such as: the instrumentalization of pictoral representation—its
philosophical foundations and limits; the conditions of “correct” representation of visibility and the
problematization of this correctnes; the use of perspective as a means of painterly expression, the
affirmative imitation of everyday life in traditional painting, and its critical use in contemporary
hyperrealism.We will also deal with the modern changes in perceptual sensibility and the
corresponding changes in modes of painting, as well as on the critical potential of painting lof late
nineteenth-century art.. The seminar will trace the philosophical premises behind the deconstruction
of the “truth” of pictorial representation in works by Diego Velázquez, René Magritte, and Vincent
van Gogh, drawing on texts by Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida. The scope
of the seminar paper will also include the phenomenological valorization of painting, the embodiment
of vision and the painter’s gesture as presented by Merleau-Ponty, juxtaposing his interpretation of
Cézanne’s paintings with Lyotard’s critique of the category of beauty and his aesthetic of the sublime
(the unpresentable).We will also consider Deleuze’s concept of figurality—directed against
representation—which relates to the painting of sensations, along with his interpretation of Bacon’s
works.The proposed seminar topics constitute broad problem areas from which students will have the
opportunity to choose the issues that interest them the most and, after developing, present them in the
form of presentations or papers during the classes. We will also consider Gilles Deleuze’s anti-
representational concept of figurality, related to the painting of sensations, along with his
interpretation of the works of -among others - Francis Bacon.The proposed seminar topics constitute
broad thematic areas from which participants will be able to select and develop research problems that
interest them most, and deliver them as presentations or papers during the course.
Proposed Seminar Topics
(Each topic will be discussed during a double, three-hour session.):
1.Mimesis – realism – representation; different criteria of evaluation.
Possible directions for further specification:
-ideologized representation (the ethical regime of images and the representative regime of the arts
according to Jacques Rancière, along with examples of its application in philosophy and art);
-realism in painting as a form of social critique (scope: from Olympia by Édouard Manet to The White
and the Black by Félix Vallotton, from the painting of Gustave Courbet to feminist art criticism);
-imitation as critique in hyperrealism.
2.The dispersion (and suspension) of perception according to Walter Benjamin and Jonathan Crary —
a critical reflection on the modernization of “ways of seeing” and realism in late 19th-century painting
(in works by, among others, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, as well as post-auratic
art).
3,Between image, word, and reality — from representation as resemblance to representation as
betrayal of the object (the epistemological meaning of the critical potential of painting in the thought
of Michel Foucault (The Order of Things) and in the painting of René Magritte (The Treachery of
Images)).
4.The departure from representation as imitation in Martin Heidegger’s ontological thinking of art;
deconstruction of philosophical interpretations (by Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro) of Vincent van
Gogh’s painting in The Truth in Painting by Jacques Derrida. “Blindness” as an irreducible dimension
of all seeing (interpretation and art). What does the parergon do?
5.Perspective in painting: from a “neutral technique of representation” (Leon Battista Alberti) to a
symbolic form (Erwin Panofsky) and an artistic means of expression in Mannerism (Gustav René
Hocke) and in contemporary art (disintegration, multiplication of perspectives as deferral and
differentiation of meaning).
6.The painted image as a trace of the encounter between body and world — phenomenology on the
painter’s gesture and seeing through the body.
7.Painting and the impossibility of representation / the sublime — figurality in the philosophy of art of
Jean-François Lyotard.
8,Body, sensation, image: Deleuze and painting. The affective impact of art (Gilles Deleuze).
The exact scope of the seminar topics will be determined during the organizational meeting in
accordance with participants’ preferences.